We used to have beers at a joint up on Sunset Boulevard which was a block away from the shop. You could bank on most of the Haughton crew being in there on payday. One payday it was business as usual. We were drinking beer, telling lies, pounding our chests and playing the bowling machine. Bob and another mechanic were bowling on the machine when a Haughton truck driver picked up a ball, tossed it down the lane and spoiled the score for Bob and the other guy. The guy thought it was pretty funny. Bob politely asked him to knock it off. The driver didn't know whom he was dealing with. Well he did it again. "Bad Idea"� Bob just picked him up and tossed him down the alley with such force that he wedged in the back of the machine. It took three of us to get him out of the inside of the machine. It was a strike!
It was hard to imagine that during the Korean War at the Chosen Reservoir on a freezing December night in 1950 this quiet man, burned out three barrels of his Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR). This action along with other feats of valor won "Bob" a Silver Star, Bronze Star and a Purple Heart. Bob always said he would go out "With Fire Coming out Of My Asshole".
He did "Just That" when later in his career his luck ran out. On a high rise job in Los Angeles Bob and his helper were working on a newer skip that Haughton was using. These skips had no safeties and were powered by small winding drum machines mounted at the bottom landing. The skips used a 3/8 inch steel cable fed threw a block in the overhead and back down to the skip. The guys on the skip controlled it with a pendant station on a cable connected to the drum machine. No one was watching it while Bob and his helper were working ten floors up the hoistway. The cable wound off the drum and broke. Bob and his helper were in a ten floor freefall. While falling down the hoistway Bob made sure his helper was laying flat on the skip to minimize his injuries. The skip hit the two to one sheave on the car frame sitting in the pit. Because the skip hit the sheave first, it broke in half and cushioned the fall. The helper stayed on the skip and was not seriously hurt, Bob on the other hand, didn't fare so well, he was still on his feet during the impact.
The impact threw him off the skip into the hoistway where he was wedged between the hoistway wall and the platform in the pit. Bob�s recovery was a long ordeal. He couldn't walk for months. I and "Dirty John" paid him a visit and watched him get up unassisted and go to the bathroom for the first time since the accident. A year later Bob returned to work. Luck just wasn't on his side when a Skill saw got away from him and ran across his arm. It took extensive surgery and rehabilitation before he could get back to work. Bob passed away a few years later. We lost a great comrade and hero. There are not enough and never will be enough men like Bob.
